Enduring Hope

Just keep your distance, I just want to be alone. They tell me it is just a scratch – don’t worry about it. They tell me “I don’t think that way, so you shouldn’t either”. They tell me to embrace the new. “It’s not a problem to me, so should not be a problem to you” They tell me to be joyful, despite the hurt and the pain. Everything hurts, everything is new, everything is challenging. Can I just be alone, can I just be, can I just handle it? Too much to bear, it’s just too much to bear.

“Hold on to your hope and watch your triumph unfold.” “Take courage my heart, stay steadfast my soul, He is in the waiting, hold on to your hope and your triumph unfolds, He is never failing.”

“Find strength in joy, let His words lead you on, do not forget His great faithfulness, to finish all He’s begun.”

“You will surely keep your promise to me, that I will rise in your victory”

For you have need of patiently, enduring hope.

Here take some of mine.

For your hope has walked off, has abandoned you, has forgotten you, has lost itself, cannot find itself.

Yet I do not consider you without hope.

I do not consider your imperfections as flaws, only evidence of my love.

You seek perfection, yet I given you love.

You want to remove the scratch, cover up the wounds, yet I wear my scars with joy.

Are these wounds not the best representation of my love?

“The war is over, turn around, lay your weapons on the ground…. He has made a way for us, born for glory out of dust”

You struggle with imperfections. You define yourself by that which is less than perfect, yet I define you by my love.

You want to present yourself in a way that I will consider worthy of acceptance, yet I have already accepted you. I chose you before you were even born. I know all there is about you, and yet you are my beloved.

You remember when you and your beloved first came together, were first considered “an item”. She presented all that she considered imperfect, that might have been deal breakers, and yet the more she listed them off, the more you were overcome with love. You remember it now, like it was yesterday.

You smile as, you had already considered that she could say or do nothing that would hinder your love for her. The more she presented her issues, the more you added things to love about her.

Now you know how I feel about you…

What…. I see that you are lost for words…..

You know what it is to love, for you are defined by your love, you consider yourself a lover, there is nothing you would not do for love. There is nothing on her list that could stop your love.

Yet I cannot bear for her to be hurt. I see the scars that I have inflicted. I don’t know what to do. She is my precious treasure. I cannot bear to see her in pain.

You cannot get this picture out of your mind this week.

The broken glass, the shattered treasure, with the oil of joy resting upon it.

You consider joy to be shattered, broken and without repair. Yet I have broken open joy, I have released joy, I have set joy free. I said “be free” and it was so…

“What was torn you mend again, you redesign the tattered thread by thread. You take the broken and destroyed. You rebuild. You make whole.”

“Joy begin to rise, hope begin to light the dark. Our God exchanges old for new. Dawn has conquered night. Death has lost to life. And now we are exchanging old for new.”

Cast not away your confidence, for it has great recompense of reward.

Hebrews 10:32-39 But be ever mindful of the days gone by in which, after you were first spiritually enlightened, you endured a great and painful struggle, Sometimes being yourselves a gazingstock, publicly exposed to insults and abuse and distress, and sometimes claiming fellowship and making common cause with others who were so treated. For you did sympathize and suffer along with those who were imprisoned, and you bore cheerfully the plundering of your belongings and the confiscation of your property, in the knowledge and consciousness that you yourselves had a better and lasting possession. Do not, therefore, fling away your fearless confidence, for it carries a great and glorious compensation of reward. For you have need of steadfast patience and endurance, so that you may perform and fully accomplish the will of God, and thus receive and carry away and enjoy to the full what is promised. For still a little while (a very little while), and the Coming One will come and He will not delay. But the just shall live by faith My righteous servant shall live by his conviction respecting man’s relationship to God and divine things, and holy fervor born of faith and conjoined with it; and if he draws back and shrinks in fear, My soul has no delight or pleasure in him. But our way is not that of those who draw back to eternal misery (perdition) and are utterly destroyed, but we are of those who believe who cleave to and trust in and rely on God through Jesus Christ, the Messiah and by faith preserve the soul. Amen to that